Jill DuffyMichel ThomasMichel Thomas' language-learning method is designed to give you functional skills. The audio courses bring you into the world of the spoken language, but it doesn't teach reading or writing.

Minimal reading and no writing. No interactive materials. Confusing purchasing options and prices.

Bottom Line

Michel Thomas' language-learning method is designed to give you functional skills. The audio courses bring you into the world of the spoken language, but it doesn't teach reading or writing.

Whether Michel Thomas is one of the best language-learning programs for you largely depends on what kind of learning environment works for you. Michel Thomas is an audio-based program, and it uses a method that's meant to be relaxed and low stress. There's no homework or rote memorization. There aren't even any written materials, save for an optional e-booklet you can download for reference. For developing a basic level of comfort with a language and growing your confidence, it's highly effective. Unfortunately, the program has its shortcomings, not least of which have to do with the confusing procedure of buying it in the first place.

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The man who developed the program, Michel Thomas, is a legend in the world of language learning. Thomas was born in 1914 and died in 2005. He spoke multiple languages, survived imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps, and was a decorated war veteran in part for collecting information through communication. He also developed the Michel Thomas Method of teaching languages and opened a private school in 1947 teaching some of the biggest celebrities of the time. Eventually, his method became an audio-based program that's now sold electronically.

Michel Thomas offers programs in 17 languages. Five of these languages are only available from the website, not on mobile devices, and they're marked with an asterisk: Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Modern Standard)*, Chinese (Mandarin), Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hindi*, Italian, Japanese, Korean*, Norwegian*, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, Spanish, and Swedish*.

Michel Thomas Pricing

When you buy one of the Michel Thomas language learning programs, you can spend anywhere from about $7 to $100. Michel Thomas courses used to be sold as tapes and CDs, and you can still find some used CDs sold second-hand. But the current method of sale is electronically through Audible, iOS, or the Michel Thomas website. It's confusing, as the prices and packages offered in each place are not identical. Plus, if you buy via the iOS app (which has the best prices), you only get the files on your iOS device. Here's how it shakes out:

When you buy Michel Thomas programs through Audible.com, they cost around $16 for each one-hour lesson. That means you end up paying about $128 for eight hours of lessons, which is a higher price than if you buy through iOS or the Michel Thomas website.

Michel Thomas iOS App Prices

Download the Michel Thomas iOS app for the language of your choice and you get the option to buy four products: Hour 1 ($6.99), Hour 2 ($6.99), Hour 3 ($6.99), and Hours 4 to 8 ($19.99 or $20.99, depending on the language). From what I can tell, these audio files are exactly the same as the eight-hour "Foundation" course online. If you buy all the files from the iOS app, it's a grand total of about $41-$42. That's the best price you can get. This mobile app also contains flashcards to go with the audio files.

Michel Thomas Website Prices

On the Michel Thomas website, you get more options for the type of lessons you want to buy. Some languages have as many as six options, and some have very few. For example, Hindi has Start Hindi ($11.99) and Foundation Hindi ($100). But Italian has six courses: Start ($11.99), Foundation ($100), Language Builder ($50), Intermediate ($90), Italian Vocabulary ($75), and Insider's Italian ($75). The website includes descriptions of each course.

At the risk of repeating myself, the Foundation courses seem to be exactly the same as Hours 1 to 8 in the mobile app. So, if you buy it online rather than in the iOS app, you pay more than twice as much.

The Michel Thomas Setup

To try the Michel Thomas courses, I went through the Foundation Arabic course. I also did the introductory lesson in Italian to see how the teaching differs from one language to another.

The program is entirely audio based, so you don't learn to read or spell. You spend all your time listening, thinking, and speaking.

Each audio program has at least one instructor and two students. In the Italian course, you learn from Michel Thomas himself. In the Arabic course, you have one qualified teacher of Arabic who is not a native speaker, Jane Wightwick, plus a second instructor who is a native speaker, Mahmoud Gaafar. Wightwick drives the course and Gaafar clarifies pronunciation and sometimes chimes in with helpful suggestions.

The students are complete beginners who are learning to speak the language, and you're the third student. You listen as the instructors teach. Any time the instructor asks a student to produce a word or phrase, you pause the audio and try to answer out loud. Then you resume and listen as the student responds. The instructor might offer corrections or clarification. Finally, you hear one of the instructors say the answer correctly.

A real example in the Arabic course is, "In Arabic, how would you ask a man, 'Can you see my son?'" Arabic uses gender in the language, so word endings change slightly when you speak to males versus females. At this point in the program, you've learned to say each word in this sentence, but you've never heard them or said them in this order before. You pause the app and try to say it. When you unpause, you hear the student make an attempt. Then you hear the instructor say the phrase in Arabic with a native pronunciation.

Learning With Michel Thomas

Michel Thomas' method has unique aspects that make it completely different from any other learning method. When you start a new Michel Thomas course, you get schooled in two rules before you even learn a single word of the new language. One has to do with using the pause button and speaking aloud. The other explains the Michel Thomas philosophy of your role as student.

Your job is to be completely relaxed and to not try and force memorization. The course won't give you any homework, and you aren't supposed to review the material in between lessons either. "Let it be absorbed and internalized," says Michel Thomas, who teaches the Italian lessons.

What's missing here is some guidance on how often you should listen to the audio files. Should I do one per day or several per day? Should I repeat a lesson if I'm struggling to answer all the prompts? A different audio-based language program, Simon & Schuster Pimsleur, has precise recommendations for how often to do the lessons (exactly one per day) and when to repeat a lesson (if you didn't answer correctly at least 80 percent of the time).

Building Blocks

Michel Thomas Foundation courses are meant to teach you functional language. Many language programs start by teaching you simple words such as "hello" and "goodbye." Those are useful words, but they aren't the best building blocks.

Instead, the Michel Thomas method gives you words that you can use over and over again in different context. In Arabic, you start with words such as "I," "you," and a couple of simple verbs. Throw in some borrowed words, such as "cola" and "sandwich," plus a few high-frequency words, like "water" and "tea," and you can quickly say, "I would like a sandwich and a tea, please." Because of the way Arabic works, you can also say, "Would you like tea?" and about a dozen other simple sentences by swapping around the words you already know.

In Italian, it's similar. You learn words for "it is," "possible," "to buy," and more. By the end of the first less, you can say, "I want to buy it if it's not too expensive," and many other combinations of sentences using your new vocabulary.

How Fun Is the Michel Thomas Method?

I really enjoy learning through listening. For some languages, I much prefer to hear a word and try to repeat it several times before I ever see how it's written, as the spelling can sometimes trip me up. In that sense, I like the Michel Thomas method a lot.

I also like that the students are far from perfect. They get things wrong. They forget words that we just learned a few minutes ago. They struggle with some of the Arabic sounds that are unusual for English speakers. In that sense, they're just like me, which puts me at ease.

That said, the first few minutes of the very first lesson are awful. The instructors go on and on about how you need to be relaxed as a student, and how if you're not learning it's their fault. Then, when you finally get into the heart of the lesson, there's an blaring beep whenever you're supposed to pause the audio. It's incredibly annoying, and thankfully, it stops entirely after a few minutes. So, if you do a trial lesson with Michel Thomas, don't judge it based on the first 10 minutes. It improves dramatically after that.

The cuts for where one lesson ends and the next begins seem arbitrary. It sounds as if the lessons were recorded in one eight-hour session, and then later, a producer sliced it up into parts. Aside from the very first lesson, there no introductions and no conclusions. It's very rare that you stop and take stock of what you've learned, and when it does happen, it's not necessarily at the end of a lesson. One lesson ends and the next one begins with the very next breath. It feels haphazard.

You can download a free PDF booklet to go with your lessons from the Michel Thomas website or yet another iOS app called the Michel Thomas Library. The booklets contain a brief summary of what you learned in each lesson. For languages that use a non-Roman script, the writing is transliterated, so you won't learn Arabic script or Cyrillic or Chinese characters.

What You Get

The Michel Thomas method has a few benefits. For one, it's great for learning pronunciation. Second, you really have to work to retrieve words and concepts from you mind. Some language-learning programs use multiple-choice exercises extensively. In those programs, you aren't being pushed to retrieve the word, but rather to remember something about it, like its first letter or whether it's a short or long word. But Michel Thomas pushes you to recall each word that you need every time you use it.

I also find that translating is harder when done orally, compared with doing it in writing. When translating sentences on a screen, you can glance up at each word as often as you need until you translate them all. When translating orally, you don't have that luxury. It takes more active thinking and remembering to get through a multi-part sentence.

With Michel Thomas, you practice figuring out what you do know how to say using the building blocks you've learned so far. That's an effective strategy for building confidence in your abilities and for developing a foundation for a language. But it will only get you so far.

What's Missing

As with any audio-only program, there's no reading, writing, or spelling in Michel Thomas—or at almost none, considering you can download a PDF booklet to go with the lessons. Keep in mind that for non-Roman alphabets, the text is transliterated. For a more interactive approach with a wider variety of types of instruction, you might instead (or additionally) try Fluenz, which offers many different ways to study, and includes reading and writing in its instruction.

In the Michel Thomas Foundation course, the instructors never ask you a question in the new language and expect you to hear it, understand it, and respond. I wish there were a little bit of that because hearing and understanding is necessary to be able to reply. But the method doesn't use this technique. Instead, you're only coached on putting together new sentences using the words you learn.

In the core program, you do get a little bit of grammar instruction, but not in a written form. For some languages, being able to see verb conjugations or other aspects of grammar can help adults learn it faster.

With Michel Thomas, I didn't feel like I heard a lot of positive reinforcement from the instructors. I would have preferred a touch more enthusiasm when the students were able to answer prompts correctly.

Listening and Speaking Only

With any self-paced language-learning program, it's important to have realistic expectations for what you will and won't learn. Michel Thomas' Foundation courses can help you develop a base for learning a language. You'll acclimate your ear and your tongue, but you won't learn to read or write. While you'll learn highly useful words and build confidence in your ability to use them in different contexts, your vocabulary will still be limited. If you like this kind of education but like a bit more structure, you might enjoy Simon & Schuster Pimsleur courses better, as they give you quite about more instruction on how to use the course.

Michel Thomas

Bottom Line: Michel Thomas' language-learning method is designed to give you functional skills. The audio courses bring you into the world of the spoken language, but it doesn't teach reading or writing.

About the Author

Jill Duffy is a contributing editor, specializing in productivity apps, as well as health and fitness technology. She writes the weekly Get Organized column, with tips on keeping your digital life tidy and tidying up your real life using technology. She is the author of the book Get Organized: How to Clean Up Your Messy Digital Life and writes abou... See Full Bio

Michel Thomas

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